Graffiti
by qwanderer
Summary: 10 years later, the last of the Earth Seekers is neutralized - and all over the galaxy, things are changing.


It's very disconcerting to be a Seeker on Earth right now. In all my lives, I've never encountered anything like this planet. Never felt that my calling might not be right.

There are only a few of us left. When we started to disappear, it became obvious that there were many more wild humans left on this planet than we ever suspected. And what's more, they were winning. It's much more dangerous, here on Earth, to be a Seeker than it is to be without a Soul.

I've only ever wanted to bring peace. To stop the struggling, to end the pain and panic and anger that always fill the stragglers when we inhabit a planet. For the last few years, I've been led to wonder if I'm causing more than I'm stopping.

The main population of souls, the humans tend to leave alone. "Live and let live," I guess they would say. It's us they fear. It's the Seekers, and the Seekers only, who they seem to be intent on eliminating.

It's ironic how, in the beginning, they were dependent on secrecy, and we were the ones wanting things out in the open. Now, every day I see that ad on the television. "If your host is still conscious, we beg you. Contact the Human Re-Integration Network. We can help you. We can help you both." No one who answered the ad was seen again - at least not by a Seeker. If I were to go to the television networks, tell them I was a Seeker, and to stop running the ad, I would vanish within the week. Our lives depend on secrecy now - and deception is not a strength of ours.

It's been twenty years since the bulk of the human species was inhabited by souls. Five years ago the human children of souled parents began to become teenagers. Our job became much harder. If we find a human child, fourteen years of age, we cannot simply detain him. We must do our research, verify the identity against that of every human child born into our society. And then the boy will either be verified, or long gone.

_And what is the difference?_ A small voice in the back of my mind asks. These children were raised by souls, yes, and they are loved by our kind, and taught to be peaceful and considerate. But if another child of the same species can also live within our society without disrupting it, why shouldn't he?

I detained a boy, back in those days when the Seekers still had enough influence to do such things without being kidnapped by the Resistance. He was wild, uncooperative, even violent, everything I had expected of a human boy raised by human fighters. We couldn't verify his identity until after we had performed an insertion on him.

It was terrible. The new soul cried for the boy, and the soul parents he had run away from. He asked to be taken out. "Please," he sobbed. "I can't steal the body of their child. He didn't know how much they loved him. He hated himself for being too emotional, for his temper; he wished every day he had been born a soul. His anguish is too strong; I don't want it. Send me back. Send me back to the Spiders."

We had to honor his request. We knew from rumors that there were humans in the Resistance who would wake up again, after the Soul was removed. But the boy had wished himself out of existence too strongly. All we could do was return the boy's body to his grieving parents.

That was the day when I truly began to question my calling. I had ended pain, yes; but it had been the pain of a member of our society, and I had caused pain to three other souls in the process.

After that, I refused to perform insertions on any human, even an infant. Human infants were never found, but if they had been, I would have given the child to a soul family who wished to raise a human child.

I'd been to the spaceports a few times, looking into discrepancies in shipping numbers. It was something that we'd never kept track of on any other planet, but humans did so love to count things. We hadn't counted them here, either, until the Resistance was spotted stealing cryopods.

It was an odd sight. So early in the settlement of a world, one would expect to see many pods shipped here, and few shipped. back. But since the recommended insertion age had dropped to infancy only, and so many souls had had difficulty with their hosts, the records were of a more or less even rotation.

And the actual pods being shipped in and out? We found more went out.

They were winning. Our population here was shrinking. Of that we could be sure. There was only one Soul with the potential for Motherhood who had ever come to Earth, and as far as we could tell, she had died somewhere in the Arizona desert.

We tried to find the extra pods and where they were coming from, and it was at that point that Seekers began to vanish quickly, one after the other, until we became afraid to reveal what we were to anyone. Afraid to go about our business in public.

_Maybe this is what it feels like to be one of the Resistance,_ said that little voice in the back of my head. I knew of two other Seekers who were still alive; that was all. I wondered constantly what the Resistance would do to me if they caught me; it seemed more and more likely that they would remove me from this body. But before that? And after?

Would Caroline wake up?

Caroline had always had this little voice in the back of her head, as far back as she could remember. Human brains seemed uniquely built to hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time. But had that little voice become part of my mind? Or was that her, just hiding, waiting?

Caroline had been an artist and a yoga teacher. Patience and peace were second nature to her. Was she waiting, watching, biding her time?

_This situation is making you paranoid,_ said the voice, and then it chuckled as I raised my eyebrows at the second person pronoun. Was this normal, for a human brain? She had teased herself this way often enough. I put away my worries and focused on the situation at hand.

Aside from the kidnappings, the Resistance hadn't been violent in a long time. It made it difficult to find them. And they'd learned to follow the speed limit. That had been a giveaway. It was so hard for them to follow their own laws. But once they became our laws? They learned to obey them to the letter, pitch-perfect Souls.

_So why should we hunt them down? Just to dispose of the "non-functional" bodies? They seem to be quite functional in our society, actually._

I didn't know.

I and the two other Seekers I still had contact with had decided that the priority now was to find out what happened to kidnapped Souls. The Resistance was too big now to stop, without a larger force of Seekers being shipped in and having to grow up.

So I was going to walk into a trap.

* * *

They snuck up on me, and tied my hands behind me. I didn't struggle. They brought me into some kind of medical facility, and guided me to a chair.

"You are the Seeker, Smoke Whisper?"

The woman who stood in front of me was tiny, shockingly so, but a second look told me she was in her late twenties. I was more surprised to see that her eyes reflected silver in the well-lit room.

I saw no reason not to answer. "Yes."

"Is your host still conscious?"

I was actually curious about that. I decided to answer honestly. "I'm really not sure. I've never had trouble with this body, but sometimes it seems like I have too many thoughts for one person."

"What was her name?"

"Caroline," I answered. "She was an artist. Sometimes I draw too. I get inspired, just the way I remember it happening to her. It feels like I can't help it, but that's just the way she felt."

That was more than I had meant to tell them.

The small blond woman standing over me sat down, and looked into my eyes with a gentle, seeking expression. "Caroline," she said. "If you're there, please know that I want what's best for you, as well as Smoke Whisper. We can separate you without hurting either of you."

"I'm confused," I said. "If you can separate a Soul from a body, why have you still got yours? You've obviously taken over control of that body. And we know you've been shipping Souls off planet. Why not that one?"

"Humm." The small woman, who had a scattering of freckles across her nose, set back at that. "So the Seekers still don't realize. Well, why would it occur to you?"

"What are you talking about?" I was bewildered, but at the back of my mind, things were stirring. Connections were being made.

"Smoke Whisper, my name is Wanderer. The first time I woke up on this planet, I was in the body of a human named Melanie. She fought hard for her existence, and she fought dirty. She used her emotions to win me over to the side of the Resistance. I let her have her body back, and in return, she gave me this one. It wouldn't wake up. They judged it empty."

"You're a Soul!" I gasped. "That's why we never caught you!"

"We don't have to fight," said the man behind me, the one who had tied me up. Gently, it had to be said. The binding didn't hurt at all. And as he walked over to sit by the tiny Wanderer, still towering over her, I could see the shine in his eyes. "I am Burns Living Flowers."

I stared at him as he continued to speak. "This planet has no need of Seekers. Humans are adaptable. They can learn to live with us. And maybe, someday, we will learn to live with them."

"How many..." I breathed. "How many of us?"

"Dozens," Burns Living Flowers answered, "living among humans. Hundreds, sympathetic and ready to help. Your Calling is obsolete."

I was speechless with shock.

In the back of my mind, a voice was saying, _I knew it, I knew it!_

I didn't realize yet what was happening, but the voice continued. _Creatures as reasonable as you couldn't keep blind to this forever. I knew one day you'd realize humans aren't going to disappear._

"Caroline?" I gasped.

"Is she talking to you?" Wanderer asked. Her eyes lit up. "How are you, Caroline?"

_Staying sane,_ the voice answered her. _Biding my time. You know me, Smoke Whisper._ The voice laughed.

"Oh!" My eyes widened. "That is you, then?"

_Yes,_ Caroline answered. _The art we did together - it helped keep me sane. You didn't fight that, so I didn't need to fight you._

"I see that she is talking," Wanderer continued. "That's good. It shouldn't be difficult to wake her up. Since you seem cooperative, we'll give you a choice of all the planets 50 years or more from here. Where would you like to go?"

My mind was jumping from thought to thought, but this question brought me to focus. "I did like being a Fire Taster. Only being human could make living on that world seem simple."

Burns Living Flowers laughed at that. "To be sure. The choices here are...even more painful. But sometimes that can be worthwhile."

Content Caroline, gentle little Wanderer, and the smiling tower who was Burns Living Flowers surrounded me with a feeling of rightness. If this was what the Seekers had been fighting, I was ready to be done with fighting it.

I had to warn them.

"I've got a tracking device on me. There are others coming," I said urgently.

But Wanderer and Burns only smiled.

"We know," Burns said. "We're ready to capture them, too. The last of the Seekers."

"You tried so hard to hide yourselves. But you're no match for Crazy Uncle Jed and his conspiracy theories." Wanderer smiled to herself at a memory, and lifted a canister of Still.

_Goodbye, Smoke Whisper,_ Caroline said. _I'll miss you._

The darkness closed in.

* * *

I woke up in a Fire Taster that had just come to maturity. Lucky enough for traveling souls, infancy was something we didn't have to deal with here. Several souls were observing me, including a flower with a silver glint to its leaf-nodes. _There are interesting things happening all over the galaxy,_ I thought.

"Are you Smoke Whisper?" the healer asked.

"Yes," I said. My whiskers drew down as I realized how empty my head felt without Caroline in the back of it, questioning and commenting. Even though I hadn't known she was there, I missed her now.

"We apologize if you were sent here in error," he said, worriedly. "The shipments from Silkheads have been inconsistent for some time now. Your paperwork is incomplete...was this your intended destination?"

"Yes," I said, raising my whiskers in reassurance. "Yes, this is where I want to be."

"Oh, good," the healer said, his lips flapping in relief as he exhaled. "I was afraid we had another abduction on our hands. What has been going on with the Silkheads? We've only heard second hand. No one's been unwillingly extracted and sent here, thank goodness."

"Oh...I'm your first, then," I admitted. "The Free Silkheads gave me a choice, and I did like it here, my second life."

"What."

"Well...there are no words on this planet to explain. The force of a Silkhead personality is so strong. My host...I lived in her for twenty years, and when the Free Silkeads captured me to extract me, she was still there, conscious and strong. We can't possess that world the way we do all the others. The Silkheads refuse to disappear."

The healer chuffed in disbelief. "I'd heard...but I didn't believe. Your host was...awake, all those years?"

"Yes," I answered. Then I asked a question. It was the kind of thing I missed Caroline wondering about, there in the back of my head. "I'm curious. What are the most recent guidelines for emigrating to the Silkheads?"

"It's closed," the healer said. "There's just too much chance of something going wrong, and not enough available bodies. I hope," and he hesitated here, "that you don't have your heart set on going back someday. Some of the unwillingly returned are said to be quite irrational about it."

"No," I said, twiddling my whiskers thoughtfully. "It is a compelling place. But I think it's well enough that they get a chance to sort things out for themselves." And then I spoke more quietly. "Besides...by now, Caroline has lived her life, and died her final death." I wished I could have known her - really known her, as a friend.

* * *

I saw my Comforter often, of course. They made sure to keep close track of anyone who'd been sent back from Silkheads.

"You've been a Seeker all your lives, until this one. Is that right?"

"Yes," I answered. "I liked that I was bringing peace to beings who were full of turmoil."

"Well, it is a difficult job. I'm not surprised you got tired of it. Especially after how things went for you with the Silkheads."

"It's not that."I thought hard. "I'm not tired of it. But Caroline made me think. She never let up. If I had a thought she didn't quite agree with, she'd always question it. And she changed me."

"How did she change you?" the Comforter asked.

"She liked peace as much as I did. I still think peace is important. But peace shouldn't mean a lack of struggle. She fought within herself every day, before I came. She fought with me the same way. It only made both of us stronger. In a lot of ways, it made us both happier. Now, when I look at a creature without a Soul...I don't want to take away the turmoil inside it. That seems wrong. I want to create turmoil in people, instead. Not in a violent way! Just enough that maybe they see that things could, and perhaps should, change."

"And this is why you do...what you do?"

"Yes. It just feels right to me."

I had become what I called a poet activist, but in the eyes of others here, a more apt description might have been something like the Silkhead term "graffiti artist."

* * *

I had missed drawing, that push and pull between myself and Caroline that resulted in something beautiful and moving. One day, as I sat by the fire pit with the others, eating the synthetic smoke supplement, the fuel below caught my eye. I wondered if it would act much like charcoal.

I grabbed it up and walked to one of the chalk white cliffs all around. I put my new pencil to my new paper. _What do you think, Caroline?_ I asked myself. _A line here? What does that look like to you? How do you feel right now? Well, right now,_ I thought forcefully, _you're long gone. Of course you always believed in ghosts, didn't you, Caroline? Oh, my friend, if you are a ghost, help me with this. Guide my hand. Be my muse. There is something I need to figure out how to say. How to feel._

The pictograms of this world came out twisted, tortured. It looked so unlike anything a normal Soul would do. But here, as among the Silkheads, no Soul was normal for long.

I could sense the twitching of whiskers behind me. The...poem, for lack of a better word, distressed them. If the first Smoke Whisper had seen me now, he would have fainted. When I lived here before, I thought tranquility was valuable over all else. But this was better. I enjoyed stirring things up.

As I stood there, a Walking Flower came over and looked. The Flowers had quiet voices, and it must have been yelling. But to me it sounded like a breathy whisper.

"Yes, that is what it's like," the flower said. "That's it exactly."

That is when I knew that I had become a poet.


End file.
